piou's blog

Now through September 3rd, protesters are being arrested in front of the White House to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would pipe oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
Why the protests? Says Bill McKibben of 350.org, who was arrested for protesting:
"Tar sands mining has already wrecked huge swaths of native land in Alberta and endangers farms, wild areas, and aquifers all along its prospective route.)
"Now, however, people are coming to understand—as we hoped our demonstrations would highlight—that it poses a danger to the whole planet as well."

Also joining the protests is NASA climate scientist James Hansen:
"What makes tar sands particularly odious is that the energy you get out in the end, per unit carbon dioxide, is poor. It's equivalent to burning coal in your automobile. We simply cannot be that stupid if we want to preserve a planet for our children and grandchildren."

Fast Company has some advice on making the most of coffee. Basically, drink less in general, so it really kicks in when you need it:
"...try to keep yourself caffeine-neutral and wean yourself from dependency... Once you're past the rough mornings and headaches, you're able to strategically deploy the stuff when you've got a big day ahead and need better attention and memory performance."

One of the more interesting tidbits from the article - the post-surgery headache a lot of people get is due to lack of caffeine, not anesthesia:
"Puzzled that a number of surgery patients complained of headaches that sometimes delayed their discharge, Mayo researchers have determined the problem often is nothing more than lack of caffeine."

The first comment in this post, where the io9 folks quote J.J. Abrams defending the ending of Lost, ties a nice little bow on that series. Read the comment, or see what it's about after the jump:

Usually when people advocate single-payer healthcare and point to other countries where the government pays for pretty much all healthcare (and patients have better outcomes, to boot), they point out that those countries pay less for healthcare as a percentage of GDP than we do.

Surprisingly, not only do a number of countries with single-payer healthcare pay less than we do; but their governments pay less than our government. And then on top of that, we end up paying much more for healthcare privately, in addition to the amount our government is already spending.

It seems that arguing against single-payer healthcare in the U.S. involves thinking that Americans just aren't as good as the British, Japanese, Canadians, etc. at handling large-scale payment systems.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation points to some cautionary tales of people running open wireless networks, but at the same time advocates for more widespread free WiFi sharing.

Every once in a while, I'll have a conversation with someone who'll ask a question along the lines of "What is the one thing that sets human beings apart from all other animals?" with the hope that I'll give them the answer they already believe in themselves (something about warfare, or fire, or religion, or communication, or something).

The only answer which seems right to me is: humans are those things that I recognize as being very similar to me. (If you've ever met a non-human person, substitute "people" for "humans.")

The strange conversations you used to have to stay up until midnight in high school in your friend's basement to have, now online...

"One of us believes that using 2 60Watt bulbs will give an output of 120Watts. The other believes that this is impossible and you would need a 120Watt bulb to produce 120Watts...
[Resp #1] "You're actually asking the wrong question on two fronts... Firstly, for the amount of light, you should be looking at 'lumens.'
[Resp #2] "It is not lumens that are important, but foot candles... foot candles tells you how much illumination actually exists at the target area.
[Resp #3] "Photons are the real measure of light. Set an empty tin can on the floor, and leave it there for, say, 10 minutes. After that, count the number of photons you've collected in the can."

The story of how Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers bought land in Oregon, created their own city, and through a series of poisonings and attempted assassinations tried to take over a small part of the state.

From Mother Jones - "Is It Okay To Poop in the Wilderness?"

"That's one I get asked a lot—like, why do we have to worry about this; what about all the animals that are popping [sic] out there? One, animals don't stay right along the trail. And they also don't fly around the planet like we do and pick up some bacteria in South Africa and shit into the Colorado backcountry. We can truck around diseases really fast, whereas something in the animal kingdom would spread more slowly."

I went to the Harmony Festival a couple of years ago and was blown away - K'Naan, Michael Franti & Spearhead, india.arie, Matisyahu and The Duhks were some of the awesome bands I got to see. Had to skip it last year due to life circumstances, but I purchased early bird tickets for this year a while back and now I'm glad I did, seeing that the lineup includes Primus and, once again, Michael Franti and Spearhead (and The Flaming Lips, announced a while back).

Going VIP this year, on the theory that folks in the VIP camping area will sleep all night rather than play music and hold drum circles till 5am like my camping neighbors did last time...